Per NørgÃÂ¥rd (; 13 July 1932 â 28 May 2025) was a Danish composer and music theorist. Though his style varied considerably throughout his career, his music often included repeatedly evolving melodies, in the vein of Jean Sibelius, and a perspicuous focus on lyricism. He based music on "infinity series" and other mathematical models. He composed large-scale works, eight symphonies including the choral Third, concertos and operas such as Gilgamesh. His chamber music includes ten string quartets and music for guitar. Some later works were inspired by the art of Adolf Wölfli.
The composer Julian Anderson called NørgÃÂ¥rd's style "one of the most personal in contemporary music". NørgÃÂ¥rd received several awards, including the 2016 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize.
Per NørgÃÂ¥rd was born in Gentofte, a suburb of Copenhagen on 13 July 1932. His father was a tailor, and he grew up with an elder brother. He learned to play the piano as a boy.
He studied composition with Vagn Holmboe privately at age 17. Fascinated by the sound world of Jean Sibelius, he visited the composer in person, receiving encouragement. He then studied formally at Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, with Holmboe, Finn Høffding, and Herman David Koppel. From 1956 to 1957, he studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger.
NørgÃÂ¥rd soon gained teaching positions, first at the in 1958, and then at the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music in 1960. His students at the latter included the composer Carl Davis. Between 1958 and 1962, NørgÃÂ¥rd had a stint as a music critic for the newspaper Politiken. He left these positions in 1965 to teach composition at the Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg. There, he taught many composers who went on to have major careers, including Hans Abrahamsen, Hans Gefors, Karl Aage Rasmussen, and Bent Sørensen. Thomas Adès, Britta Byström, Wolfgang Rihm, Poul Ruders, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Sven-David Sandström count him as an influence.
In his early compositions, NørgÃÂ¥rd was strongly influenced by the Nordic styles of Sibelius, Carl Nielsen, and Vagn Holmboe. In the 1960s, he began exploring the modernist techniques of central Europe, eventually developing a serial compositional system based on the "infinity series", which he used in his Voyage into the Golden Screen, the Second and Third Symphonies, I Ching, and other works of the late 1960s and '70s. His Third Symphony, with a vocal soloist and choir, became popular, performed at the 2018 BBC Proms and included in the Danish Culture Canon. Later, NørgÃÂ¥rd became interested in the Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli, who inspired many of NørgÃÂ¥rd's works, including the Fourth Symphony, the opera Det Guddommelige Tivoli, Papalagi for solo guitar, and Wie ein Kind for choir.
NørgÃÂ¥rd composed works in all major genres, including six operas, two ballets, eight symphonies and other pieces for orchestra, several concertos, choral and vocal works, many chamber works (among them ten string quartets), and several solo instrumental works. These include a number of works for guitar, mostly written for the Danish guitarist Erling Møldrup: In Memory Of... (1978), Papalagi (1981), a series of suites called Tales from a Hand (1985âÂÂ2001), Early Morn (1997âÂÂ98), and Rondino Amorino (1999). One of his most important works for percussion solo is I Ching (1982), written for the Danish percussionist Gert Mortensen. His piano work Many Returns to Bali was written for the Indonesian pianist Ananda Sukarlan to commemorate the 2002 Bali bombings. He also composed several film scores, including The Red Cloak (1966), Babette's Feast (1987), and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1993).
His Eighth Symphony was premiered on 19 September 2012 at the Helsinki Music Centre, Finland, by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by John StorgÃÂ¥rds. Heikki Valska of Finnish radio called the symphony "very bright and lyrical" and "approachable". It was well received by the audience at the premiere. It was later recorded by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo.
NørgÃÂ¥rd was also a prolific writer who authored many articles about music from not only a technical but also a philosophical viewpoint.
NørgÃÂ¥rd married Anelise Brix Thomson in 1956. They had two children together. He married his second wife Helle Rahbek in 1966. She died in 2022.
NørgÃÂ¥rd died after a long illness at a senior citizens' home in Copenhagen, on 28 May 2025, at the age of 92. He was regarded as Denmark's most prominent composer since Nielsen.
NørgÃÂ¥rd's music often uses the infinity series (Danish Uendelighedsrækken) to serialize melody, harmony, and rhythm. The method takes its name from the endlessly self-similar nature of the resulting musical material, comparable to fractal geometry. Mathematically, the infinity series is an integer sequence. "Invented in an attempt to unify in a perfect way repetition and variation," the first few terms of its simplest form are 0, 1, âÂÂ1, 2, 1, 0, âÂÂ2, 3, âÂÂ1, 2, 0, 1, 2, âÂÂ1, âÂÂ3, 4.
Uendelighedsrækken: diatonic infinity series (the first 16 terms), 0=G
Uendelighedsrækken: diatonic G major (the first 32 terms) with numbers=scale steps and 0=A
Uendelighedsrækken: chromatic pitches (the first 16 terms) centered around G
NørgÃÂ¥rd discovered the melodic infinity series in 1959 and it inspired many of his works in the 1960s. But only with Voyage into the Golden Screen for small ensemble (1968)âÂÂwhich has been called the first "properly instrumental piece of spectral composition"âÂÂand Symphony No. 2 (1970) did he begin structuring entire works with the series. The harmonic and rhythmic infinity series were developed in the early 1970s and the three series were first integrated in NørgÃÂ¥rd's Symphony No. 3.
NørgÃÂ¥rd's works include: